There’s an excellent piece in today’s Washington Post regarding the tracking for key appointments filled thus far by the Trump administration. I can’t help but compare and contrast Trump with his Republican majorities in both houses with Obama’s 2008 Democrat majorities in both houses and the lackluster performance by the Trump and his Republican majorities. Clearly, their lackluster performance is yet more proof that Republicans are not only not prepared to govern, but may not know how to govern for ALL Americans.
*Totals above include some posts that are not being tracked as ‘key positions’ in the appointee database.
As of late Tuesday, his 96th day in office, Trump had nominated an estimated 66 officials, just over a third of the 190 President Barack Obama selected in his first 100 days, according to Partnership data. The 100-day number for President George W. Bush was 85; Bill Clinton, 176; and George H.W. Bush, 95. These positions include Cabinet secretaries, deputy and assistant secretaries, chief financial officers, general counsel, heads of agencies, ambassadors and other critical leadership positions. These are just a portion of the roughly 1,200 positions that require Senate confirmation, but it doesn’t stop there. There are approximately 4100 appointments the administration will need to make.
Here’s another striking statistic from the Partnership for Public Service: “The pending number of appointees to clear federal ethics requirements is striking compared to that of the Obama administration. As of April 17, Trump had only submitted 41 percent of the nominee reports that his predecessor submitted in 2009, according to Office of Government Ethics data.”
The Senate can only act on nominations that have been formally submitted by the Trump administration. Those marked “awaiting nomination” above have been announced but not yet submitted, while those marked “formally nominated” are awaiting action by the Senate.
Think about their slow progress thus far, and then compound it with the fact that Trump fired all the Ambassadors upon his oath of office. Trump fired all the US Attorneys. Trump/Tillerson fired all the career folks at the State Department. Of 556 key positions requiring Senate confirmation … Trump has no nominee for 468 positions, only 40 are awaiting confirmation, and 24 have actually been confirmed as of April 26th.
So, at this point, he appears to be running the US Government by the seat of his pants whose seat is stained with the stench of Russia.
The article on the Washington Post is a a “tracking post” which means it identifies all the positions to be filled and the status of each position. You might want to bookmark it for your future reference.